Look Again - Lisa Scottoline [125]
“I trust that Bill will take good care of him, and right now, that’s what’s best for him. I don’t want to disrupt him again if the test is wrong.”
“Thanks,” Cusack said, and Ron nodded.
But Bill didn’t reply, just turned away and gazed out the window into the cold, dark night. He was facing the prospect of losing his son.
And Ellen knew exactly how he felt.
Chapter Ninety-six
A new snow had fallen, covering the minivans, swing sets, and lawn furniture in pristine white. The afternoon sky was sunny and bright blue, and the wind frigid and fresh, as if the deep freeze had killed every last germ, leaving only the healthiest and most wholesome air. Ellen breathed it in, standing on her porch with no coat like a crazy lady, folding her arms against her chest, her hair freshly shampooed, her sweater dry cleaned, and her socks laundered and matching. She even had on new clogs.
“Ellen, we could wait inside,” Marcelo said, standing on her right.
“Nah, let’s stay here,” her father said, on her left.
“I agree,” Barbara said, next to her father in her lovely white coat.
Behind them, Connie stood with her husband, Chuck. She said, “Wild horses couldn’t drag me off this porch.”
They all smiled, Ellen most of all, despite the reporters, TV anchor-persons, and photographers who mobbed the sidewalk in front of her house and spilled into the street, shouting questions, taking videos and pictures, and requiring five uniformed cops to keep traffic moving.
Marcelo smiled, puzzled. “Let me get this straight. It’s freezing outside, but we’re on the porch?”
“Right,” Ellen and her father answered in unison, then they looked at each other.
“Great minds,” her father said, and Ellen laughed.
Marcelo threw an arm around her shoulder. “You know what? I like it.”
“Good,” she said, snuggling against him.
Suddenly a black sedan turned onto the street, and Ellen felt her heart start to thunder. She stepped forward for a closer look, and the sedan slowed when it reached the photographers, who started hoisting videocameras to their shoulders. The sedan’s emergency lights went on, flashing yellow as it braked in front of the house.
“My God,” Ellen said under her breath, already in motion, and the press surged forward, pointing their cameras and microphones to the sedan. The doors were opening, and Bill emerged from the driver’s side and Cusack from the passenger’s. Reporters swarmed them with cameras and microphones, and Ellen ran down the front walk toward the crowd, and in the next instant she heard a little voice from its center.
“Mommy! MOMMY!”
“WILL!” Ellen shouted, tears blurring her eyes as she hit the crowd and elbowed her way through, reaching the sedan just as Bill unlatched Will from the car seat and carried him through the crazed reporters to her.
“MOMMY!” Will screamed, his arms reaching for her, and Ellen took him in her arms and hugged him so tightly she almost squished him.
“It’s all right, it’s all right now,” she said, as Will burst into tears and wrapped his arms around her neck. Reporters shouted questions and stuck cameras in their faces, but Ellen caught Bill’s eye, and his expression was pained. She called to him, “Want to come in, have a soda?”
“No thanks,” Bill called back, then gestured vaguely at Will. “I got him new shoes.”
“Thanks.” Ellen felt a stab of sympathy. “Another time, then?”
“See you,” Bill said, his eyes on Will’s back. Grief flickered through his expression, then he turned away amid the clicking cameras, and so did Ellen, with a guilt that vanished in happiness when Marcelo, her father, and Chuck arrived at her side and ran interference as she hurried back up her front walk, hustled across the porch to the open front door, and swept inside the warm, snug house.
Will didn’t touch the ground until half an hour later, after being passed from mother to grandfather to mother to new stepgrandmother to mother to Marcelo to Connie and Chuck then back again to Ellen, until he had stopped